74 ideas
| 19250 | Everything interesting should be recorded, with records that can be rearranged [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Everything worth notice is worth recording; and those records should be so made that they can readily be arranged, and particularly so that they can be rearranged. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], V) | |
| A reaction: Yet another epigraph for my project! Peirce must have had a study piled with labelled notes, and he would have adored this database, at least in its theory. |
| 19228 | Sciences concern existence, but philosophy also concerns potential existence [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy differs from the special sciences in not confining itself to the reality of existence, but also to the reality of potential being. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: One might reply that sciences also concern potential being, if their output is universal generalisations (such as 'laws'). I take disposition and powers to be central to existence, which are hence of interest to sciences. |
| 19241 | An idea on its own isn't an idea, because they are continuous systems [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as an absolutely detached idea. It would be no idea at all. For an idea is itself a continuous system. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: This is the new anti-epigraph for this database. This idea is part of Peirce's idea that relations are the central feature of our grasp of the world. |
| 19227 | Philosophy is a search for real truth [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy differs from mathematics in being a search for real truth. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: This is important, coming from the founder of pragmatism, in rejecting the anti-realism which a lot of modern pragmatists seem to like. |
| 19218 | Metaphysics is pointless without exact modern logic [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysician who is not prepared to grapple with the difficulties of modern exact logic had better put up his shutters and go out of the trade. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: This announcement comes before Russell proclaimed mathematical logic to be the heart of metaphysics (though it is contemporary with Frege's work, of which Peirce was unaware). It places Peirce firmly in the analytic tradition. |
| 19229 | Metaphysics is the science of both experience, and its general laws and types [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics is the science of being, not merely as given in physical experience, but of being in general, its laws and types. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this. The question then is whether such a science is possible. Dogmatic empiricists think not. Explanatory empiricists (me) think it is. |
| 19219 | Metaphysical reasoning is simple enough, but the concepts are very hard [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical reasonings, such as they have hitherto been, have been simple enough for the most part. It is the metaphysical concepts which it is difficult to apprehend. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: Peirce is not, of course, saying that it is just conceptual, because for him science comes first. It is the woolly concepts that alienate some people from metaphysics. Metaphysicians should challenge the concepts they use much, much more! |
| 19231 | Metaphysics is turning into logic, and logic is becoming mathematics [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics is gradually and surely taking on the character of a logic. And finally seems destined to become more and more converted into mathematics. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: Remarkably prescient for 1898. I don't think Peirce knew of Frege (and certainly not when he wrote this). It shows that the revolution of Frege and Russell was in the air. It's there in Dedekind's writings. Peirce doesn't seem to be a logicist. |
| 19247 | The one unpardonable offence in reasoning is to block the route to further truth [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: To set up a philosophy which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth is the one unpardonable offence in reasoning. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], IV) | |
| A reaction: This is Popper's rather dubious objection to essentialism in science. Yet Popper tried to do the same thing with his account of induction. |
| 19246 | 'Holding for true' is either practical commitment, or provisional theory [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Whether or not 'truth' has two meanings, I think 'holding for true' has two kinds. One is practical holding for true which alone is entitled to the name of Belief; the other is the acceptance of a proposition, which in pure science is always provisional. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], IV) | |
| A reaction: The problem here seems to be that we can act on a proposition without wholly believing it, like walking across thin ice. |
| 19237 | Deduction is true when the premises facts necessarily make the conclusion fact true [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The question of whether a deductive argument is true or not is simply the question whether or not the facts stated in the premises could be true in any sort of universe no matter what be true without the fact stated in the conclusion being true likewise. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: A remarkably modern account, fitting the normal modern view of semantic consequence, and expressing the necessity in the validity in terms of something close to possible worlds. |
| 19256 | Our research always hopes that reality embodies the logic we are employing [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Every attempt to understand anything at least hopes that the very objects of study themselves are subject to a logic more or less identical with that which we employ. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VIII) | |
| A reaction: The idea that external objects might be subject to a logic has become very unfashionable since Frege, but I love the idea. I'm inclined to think that we derive our logic from the world, so I'm a bit more confident that Peirce. |
| 8195 | Undecidable statements result from quantifying over infinites, subjunctive conditionals, and the past tense [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: I once wrote that there are three linguistic devices that make it possible for us to frame undecidable statements: quantification over infinity totalities, as expressed by word such as 'never'; the subjunctive conditional form; and the past tense. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 4) | |
| A reaction: Dummett now repudiates the third one. Statements containing vague concepts also appear to be undecidable. Personally I have no problems with deciding (to a fair extent) about 'never x', and 'if x were true', and 'it was x'. |
| 19238 | The logic of relatives relies on objects built of any relations (rather than on classes) [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: In the place of the class ...the logic of relatives considers the system, which is composed of objects brought together by any kind of relations whatsoever. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: Peirce's logic of relations might support the purely structural view of reality defended by Ladyman and Ross. Modern logic standardly expresses its semantics in terms of set theory. Peirce pioneered relations in logic. |
| 8194 | Surely there is no exact single grain that brings a heap into existence [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: There is surely no number n such that "n grains of sand do not make a heap, although n+1 grains of sand do" is true. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 4) | |
| A reaction: It might be argued that there is such a number, but no human being is capable of determing it. Might God know the value of n? On the whole Dummett's view seems the most plausible. |
| 8190 | Intuitionists rely on the proof of mathematical statements, not their truth [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The intuitionist account of the meaning of mathematical statements does not employ the notion of a statement's being true, but only that of something's being a proof of the statement. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 2) | |
| A reaction: I remain unconvinced that anyone could give an account of proof that didn't discreetly employ the notion of truth. What are we to make of "we suspect this is true, but no one knows how to prove it?" (e.g. Goldbach's Conjecture). |
| 19226 | We now know that mathematics only studies hypotheses, not facts [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It did not become clear to mathematicians before modern times that they study nothing but hypotheses without as pure mathematicians caring at all how the actual facts may be. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: 'Modern' here is 1898. As a logical principle this would seem to qualify as 'if-thenism' (see alphabetical themes). It's modern descendant might be modal structuralism (see Geoffrey Hellman). It take maths to be hypotheses abstracted from experience. |
| 8198 | A 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east' [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The idea of 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east'. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: The phrase was coined in Oxford. It is a useful label with which realists can insult solipsists, idealists and other riff-raff. Four Dimensionalists seem to see time in this way. Events sit there, and we travel past them. But there are indexical events. |
| 19240 | Realism is the belief that there is something in the being of things corresponding to our reasoning [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: If there is any reality, then it consists of this: that there is in the being of things something which corresponds to the process of reasoning. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: A nice definition of realism, a little different from usual. I belief that the normal logic of daily thought corresponds (in its rules and connectives) to the way the world is. We evaluate success in logic by truth-preservation. |
| 19239 | There may be no reality; it's just our one desperate hope of knowing anything [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: What is reality? Perhaps there isn't any such thing at all. It is but a working hypothesis which we try, our one desperate forlorn hope of knowing anything. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite sure why the hope is 'forlorn'. We have no current reason to doubt that the hypothesis is working out extremely well. Lovely idea, though. |
| 8192 | I no longer think what a statement about the past says is just what can justify it [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: In distinguishing between what can establish a statement about the past as true and what it is that that statement says, we are repudiating antirealism about the past. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is a late shift of ground from the champion of antirealism. If Dummett's whole position is based on a 'justificationist' theory of meaning, he must surely have a different theory of meaning now for statements about the past? |
| 19252 | Objective chance is the property of a distribution [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Chance, as an objective phenomenon, is a property of a distribution. ...In order to have any meaning, it must refer to some definite arrangement of all the things. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VI) |
| 19232 | In ordinary language a conditional statement assumes that the antecedent is true [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: In our ordinary use of language we always understand the range of possibility in such a sense that in some possible case the antecedent shall be true. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: Peirce is discussing Diodorus, and proposes the view nowadays defended by Edgington, though in the end Peirce defends the standard material conditional as simpler. I suspect that this discussion by Peirce is not well known. |
| 19223 | We act on 'full belief' in a crisis, but 'opinion' only operates for trivial actions [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: 'Full belief' is willingness to upon a proposition in vital crises, 'opinion' is willingness to act on it in relatively insignificant affairs. But pure science has nothing at all to do with action. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear statement of the pragmatic view of beliefs. It is not much help in distinguishing full belief about the solar system from mere opinion about remote galaxies. Ditto for historical events. |
| 8199 | The existence of a universe without sentience or intelligence is an unintelligible fantasy [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The existence of a universe from which sentience was permanently absent is an unintelligible fantasy. What exists is what can be known to exist. What is true is what can be known to be true. Reality is what can be experienced and known. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as nonsense. The fact that we cannot think about a universe without introducing a viewpoint does not mean that we cannot 'intellectually imagine' its existence devoid of viewpoints. Nothing could ever experience a star's interior. |
| 19253 | We talk of 'association by resemblance' but that is wrong: the association constitutes the resemblance [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Allying certain ideas like 'crimson' and 'scarlet' is called 'association by resemblance'. The name is not a good one, since it implies that resemblance causes association, while in point of fact it is the association which constitutes the resemblance. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VII) | |
| A reaction: I take it that Hume would have agreed with this. It is an answer to Russell's claim that 'resemblance' must itself be a universal. |
| 19224 | Scientists will give up any conclusion, if experience opposes it [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The scientific man is not in the least wedded to his conclusions. He risks nothing upon them. He stands ready to abandon one or all as experience opposes them. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: In the age of massive speculative research grants, the idea that 'he risks nothing upon them' is no longer true. Ditto for building aircraft and bridges, which are full of theoretical science. Notoriously, many scientists don't live up to Peirce's idea. |
| 19243 | If each inference slightly reduced our certainty, science would soon be in trouble [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Were every probable inference less certain than its premises, science, which piles inference upon inference, often quite deeply, would soon be in a bad way. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], IV) | |
| A reaction: This seems to endorse Aristotle's picture of demonstration about scientific and practical things as being a form of precise logic, rather than progressive probabilities. Our generalisations may be more certain than the particulars they rely on. |
| 19225 | I classify science by level of abstraction; principles derive from above, and data from below [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: I classify the sciences on Comte's general principles, in order of the abstractness of their objects, so that each science may largely rest for its principles upon those above it in the scale, while drawing its data in part from those below it. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: He places mathematics at the peak of abstraction. I assume physics is more abstract than biology. So chemistry draws principles from physics and data from biology. Not sure about this. Probably need to read Comte on it. |
| 19234 | 'Induction' doesn't capture Greek 'epagoge', which is singulars in a mass producing the general [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The word 'inductio' is Cicero's imitation of Aristotle's term 'epagoge'. It fails to convey the full significance of the Greek word, which implies the examples are arrayed and brought forward in a mass. 'The assault upon the generals by the singulars'. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, thought I don't think there is enough evidence in Aristotle to get the Greek idea fully clear. |
| 19235 | How does induction get started? [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Induction can never make a first suggestion. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: This seems to lead to the general modern problem of the 'theory-laden' nature of observation. You don't see anything at all without some idea of what you are looking for. How do you spot the 'next instance'. Instance of what? Nice. |
| 19236 | Induction can never prove that laws have no exceptions [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Induction can never afford the slightest reason to think that a law is without an exception. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: Part of the general Humean doubts about induction, but very precisely stated, and undeniable. You can then give up on universal laws, or look for deeper reasons to justify your conviction that there are no exceptions. E.g. observe mass, or Higgs Boson. |
| 19251 | The worst fallacy in induction is generalising one recondite property from a sample [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The most dangerous fallacy of inductive reasoning consists in examining a sample, finding some recondite property in it, and concluding at once that it belongs to the whole collection. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], V) | |
| A reaction: The point, I take it, is not that you infer that the whole collection has all the properties of the sample, but that some 'recondite' or unusual property is sufficiently unusual to be treated as general. |
| 19222 | Men often answer inner 'whys' by treating unconscious instincts as if they were reasons [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Men many times fancy that they act from reason, when the reasons they attribute to themselves are nothing but excuses which unconscious instinct invents to satisfy the teasing 'whys' of the ego. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: A strikely modern thought, supported by a lot of modern neuro-science and psychology. It is crucial to realise that we don't have to accept the best explanation we can think of. |
| 19220 | We may think animals reason very little, but they hardly ever make mistakes! [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Those whom we are so fond of referring to as the 'lower animals' reason very little. Now I beg you to observe that those beings very rarely commit a mistake, while we ---- ! | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: We might take this as pessimism about reason, but I would take it as inviting a much broader view of rationality. I think nearly all animal behaviour is highly rational. Are animals 'sensible' in what they do? Their rationality is unadventurous. |
| 19255 | Generalisation is the great law of mind [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The generalising tendency is the great law of mind. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VII) | |
| A reaction: How else could a small and compact mind get a grip on a vast and diverse reality? This must even apply to inarticulate higher animals. |
| 19242 | Generalization is the true end of life [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Generalization, the spelling out of continuous systems, in thought, in sentiment, in deed, is the true end of life. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: I take understanding to be the true aim of life, and full grasp of particulars (e.g. of particular people) is as necessary as generalisation. This is still a very nice bold idea. |
| 19249 | 'Know yourself' is not introspection; it is grasping how others see you [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: 'Know thyself' does not mean instrospect your soul. It means see yourself as others would see you if they were intimate enough with you. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], V) | |
| A reaction: When it comes to anger management, I would have thought that introspection had some use. You can see a tantrum coming before even your intimates can. Nice disagreement with Sartre! (Idea 7123) |
| 19257 | Whatever is First must be sentient [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: I think that what is First is ipso facto sentient. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VIII) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't mention Leibniz's monads, but that looks like the ancestor of Peirce's idea. He doesn't make clear (here) how far he would take the idea. I would just say that whatever is 'First' must be active rather than passive. |
| 19248 | Reasoning involves observation, experiment, and habituation [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The mental operations concerning in reasoning are three. The first is Observation; the second is Experimentation; and the third is Habituation. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], V) | |
| A reaction: I like the breadth of this. Even those who think scientific reasoning has priority over logic (as I do, thinking of it as the evaluation of evidence, with Sherlock Holmes as its role model) will be surprised to finding observation and habituation there. |
| 19221 | Everybody overrates their own reasoning, so it is clearly superficial [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The very fact that everybody so ridiculously overrates his own reasoning, is sufficient to show how superficial the faculty is. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: A nice remark. The obvious counter-thought is that the collective reasoning of mankind really has been rather impressive, even though people haven't yet figured out how to live at peace with one another. |
| 8193 | Verification is not an individual but a collective activity [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Verification is not an individual but a collective activity. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: This generates problems. Are deceased members of the community included? (Yes, says Dummett). If someone speaks to angels (Blake!), do they get included? Is a majority necessary? What of weird loners? Etc. |
| 8189 | Truth-condition theorists must argue use can only be described by appeal to conditions of truth [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: To demonstrate the necessity of a truth-conditional theory of meaning, a proponent of such a theory must argue that use cannot be described without appeal to the conditions for the truth of statements. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: Unlike Dummett, I find that argument rather appealing. How do you decide the possible or appropriate use for a piece of language, if you don't already know what it means. Basing it all on social conventions means it could be meaningless ritual. |
| 8191 | The truth-conditions theory must get agreement on a conception of truth [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: It is not enough for the truth-condition theorist to argue that we need the concept of truth: he must show that we should have the same conception of truth that he has. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 2) | |
| A reaction: Davidson invites us to accept Tarski's account of truth. It invites the question of what the theory would be like with a very robust correspondence account of truth, or a flabby rather subjective coherence view, or the worst sort of pragmatic view. |
| 19233 | Indexicals are unusual words, because they stimulate the hearer to look around [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Words like 'this', 'that', 'I', 'you', enable us to convey meanings which words alone are incompetent to express; they stimulate the hearer to look about him. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: Peirce was once of the first to notice the interest of indexicals, and this is a very nice comment on them. A word like 'Look!' isn't like the normal flow of verbiage, and may be the key to indexicals. |
| 23616 | Legal excuses are duress, ignorance, and diminished responsibility [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: The common legal practice is to distinguish three broad categories of excuse: duress, epistemic limitation, and diminished responsibility. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.2.1) | |
| A reaction: McMahan cites these with reference to soldiers in wartime, but they have general application. The third one seems particularly open to very wide interpretation. Presumably I can't be excused by just being irresponsible. |
| 19230 | People should follow what lies before them, and is within their power [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Each person ought to select some definite duty that clearly lies before him and is well within his power as the special task of his life. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: I like that. Note especially that it should be 'well' within his power. Note also that this is a 'duty', and not just a friendly suggestion. Not sure what the basis of the duty is. |
| 23606 | Liberty Rights are permissions, and Claim Rights are freedom from intervention [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: There are two types of right. A Liberty right is merely a permission, meaning it is not wrong to do it. But a Claim right is a right against intervention, meaning no one has a liberty right to prevent it. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: There must also be a third type of right, which requires other people to perform actions on your behalf. If you pay for a book in a shop, you must then be given the book. |
| 23620 | A person or state may be attacked if they are responsible for an unjustified threat [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It is a necessary condition of liability to defensive attack that one be morally responsible for posing an objectively unjustified threat. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 4.1.1) | |
| A reaction: This implies that one may not actually be doing the threatening (but merely ordering it, or enabling it). McMahan aims to have the same criteria for wartime as for peacetime. He denies Anscombe's claim that merely posing the threat is enough. |
| 23598 | You (e.g. a police officer) are not liable to attack just because you pose a threat [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It is false that by posing a threat to another, one necessarily makes oneself liable to defensive action. A police officer who shoots an active murderer does not thereby by make herself liable to defensive action. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is one of his arguments against the moral equality of combatants. It is not morally OK to shoot all the local soldiers when you unjustly invade a territory. Sounds right to me. |
| 23594 | Wars can be unjust, despite a just cause, if they are unnecessary or excessive or of mixed cause [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: Wars can be unjust despite having a just cause, because they are not actually needed, or they will cause excessive harm, or they also pursue some unjust causes. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The point is that older writers often think that a 'just cause' is sufficient. He is obviously right. |
| 23597 | Just war theory says all and only persons posing a threat are liable to attack [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: In mainstream just war theory (Anscombe, Nagel, Walzer) the criterion of liability to attack is simply posing a threat. Since all combatants pose a threat to each other, they are morally liable to attack; because noncombatants do not, they are not liable. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: McMahan says that the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets rests mostly on this basis. The problem is that a huge range of unarmed people can also pose various degrees of threat. |
| 23595 | The worst unjustified wars have no aim at all [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: The most serious reason why a war might be unjustified is that it lacks any justifying aim at all. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: It seems that Louis XIV invaded the Netherlands in around 1674 purely to enhance his own glory. That strikes me as worse. I supposed Ghenghis Khan invaded places simply because he enjoyed fighting. |
| 23619 | A defensive war is unjust, if it is responding to a just war [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It is possible for a defensive war to be unjust, when the defensive war to which it is a response is a just war. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.3.3) | |
| A reaction: An example might be a state resisting an intervention from outside, when the state is in the process of exterminating some unwanted minority. Or perhaps the invaders are crossing the state's territory to achieve some admirable end. |
| 23600 | Proportionality in fighting can't be judged independently of the justice of each side [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: There is simply no satisfactory understanding of proportionality in war that can be applied independently of whether the acts that are evaluated support a just or an unjust cause. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: He rejects traditional just war theory, which sees both sides as morally equal in combat, and hence equally subject to the principles of proportional response. But the just can then be harsher, when their just principles should make them milder. |
| 23603 | Can an army start an unjust war, and then fight justly to defend their own civilians? [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: There is a paradox if the unjust are justified in fighting the just in order to protect their own civilians who have been endangered by the starting of an unjust war. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: [my summary of MacMahan pp.48-49] It suggests that in a war there may be local concepts of justice which are at odds with the general situation - which is the ad bellum/in bello distinction. But this is the justice of fighting, not how it is conducted. |
| 23611 | Soldiers cannot freely fight in unjust wars, just because they behave well when fighting [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: We must stop reassuring soldiers that they act permissibly when they fight in an unjust war, provided that they conduct themselve honorably on the battlefield by fighting in accordance with the rules of engagement. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.8) | |
| A reaction: This culminates McMahan's arguments against the moral equality of combatants, and against the sharp division of justice of war from justice in war. How rare it is for philosophy to culminate in a policy recommendation! |
| 23612 | The law of war differs from criminal law; attacking just combatants is immoral, but legal [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: Unlike domestic criminal law, the law of war is designed not to protect moral rights but to prevent harm. …This means when unjust combatants attack just combatants they violate their moral rights, yet they act within their legal rights. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.1.1) | |
| A reaction: He says we must bring the law of war much closer to the morality of war. If there is any hope of slowly eliminating war, it may lie in reforms such as these. |
| 23617 | If the unjust combatants are morally excused they are innocent, so how can they be killed? [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: If most unjust combatants are morally innocent because they are excused, and if it is wrong to intentionally kill morally innocent people, then a contingent form of pacificism may be inescapable. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.3.1) | |
| A reaction: A very nice argument against the moral equality of combatants. If I think we are the good guys, and the opposing troops are no morally different from us, how can I possibly kill them? |
| 23599 | You don't become a legitimate target, just because you violently resist an unjust attack [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to see how just combatants could become legitimate targets simply by offering violent resistance to unjust attacks by unjust coombatants. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: It is, however, hard to criticise a soldier who is dragged into fighting for an unjust cause, and then kills just defenders in the course of the fight. Once the bullets fly, normal morality seems to be suspended. Just survive. |
| 23596 | If all combatants are seen as morally equal, that facilitates starting unjust wars [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It would be naïve to doubt that the widespread acceptance of the moral equality of combatants has facilitated the ability of governments to fight unjust wars. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: The point is that their armies are both compliant and seeing their actions as guiltless, which makes them perfect tools for evil. McMahan's ideal is an army which asks sharp questions about the justification of the war, before they fight it. |
| 23604 | Volunteer soldiers accept the risk of attack, but they don't agree to it, or to their deaths [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: When soldiers go to war, they undoubtedly assume a certain risk. They voluntarily expose themselves to a significant risk of being attacked. But this is entirely different from consenting to being attacked. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is his response to Walzer's thought that soldiers resemble people who volunteer for a boxing match. The sailors at Pearl Harbour obviously didn't consent to the attack, or accept the Japanese right to kill them. |
| 23608 | If being part of a big collective relieves soldiers of moral responsibility, why not the leaders too? [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: If acting as an agent of a political collective justifies the combatants fighting an unjust war, that should also release the leaders from responsibility for their role in the fighting of that war. No one ever explains why this is not so. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: At the very least there seems to be a problem of the cut off point between innocent soldiers and culpable leaders. Which rank in the army or executive triggers the blame? |
| 23610 | If soldiers can't refuse to fight in unjust wars, can they choose to fight in just wars? [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: There is a certain symmetry here. The permissibility of disobeying a command to fight in an unjust war suggests the permissibility of disobeying a command not to fight in a just war. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: The argument considered here is that since we could never allow soldiers to choose to fight in their own wars, we similarly cannot let them opt out of the official wars. Implying obedience is absolute. Soldiers don't get to 'choose' anything! |
| 23613 | Equality is both sides have permission, or both sides are justified, or one justified the other permitted [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: Moral equality means either 1) because just combatants are permitted to fight in a just way, so are the unjust , or 2) because the just are justified, so are the unjust, or 3) because the just are justified, the unjust are therefore permitted. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.1.2) | |
| A reaction: [summary] McMahan calls 1) the weak version, and 2) the strong. He suggests that although 3) is unusual, it is what most people believe - that if the good are justified, the bad are permitted to fight back. He rejects them all. |
| 23615 | Fighting unjustly under duress does not justify it, or permit it, but it may excuse it [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: It is said that combatants are compelled to fight; they have no choice. But duress is not a justification; nor does it ground a permission - not even a subjective permission. It is, instead, an excusing condition. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.1.2) | |
| A reaction: The 'subjective' permission is believing you are just, even if you aren't. A nice, accurate and true distinction made by McMahan, I think. It is roughly our postwar attitude to the Nazi army. |
| 23605 | Soldiers cannot know enough facts to evaluate the justice of their war [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: When soldiers are commanded to fight, they cannot reasonably be expected to have the factual knowledge necessary to evaluate the war as just or unjust. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This is part of the 'epistemic' justification for a soldier to fight in an unjust war. Sometimes soldiers do have enoough knowledge, especially if they join up late on in a war, when they have studied and observed its progress. |
| 23602 | Innocence implies not being morally responsible, rather than merely being guiltless [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: My alternative conception is that one is 'innocent' if one is neither morally responsible for nor guilty of a wrong. Classical theory focused on guilt, but I think we should focus on moral responsibility (which is something less). | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to make the supporters of evil equally liable to attack with its perpetrators. But you can observe perpetration a lot more easily than you can observe support. |
| 23618 | Unconditional surrender can't be demanded, since evil losers still have legitimate conditions [McMahan] |
| Full Idea: Achieving unconditional surrender can never be a justification for the continuation of war, since there are always conditions that a vanquished adversary, no matter how evil, can be justified in demanding. | |
| From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 3.3.1) | |
| A reaction: McMahan is particularly discussing Hiroshima, but this also applies to the European war in 1945. Presumably a civilised victor will grant the conditions which the losers would have demanded, and that probably happened in 1945. It's about power. |
| 19245 | We are not inspired by other people's knowledge; a sense of our ignorance motivates study [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is not the man who thinks he knows it all, that can bring other men to feel their need for learning, and it is only a deep sense that one is miserably ignorant that can spur one on in the toilsome path of learning. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], IV) |
| 19244 | Chemists rely on a single experiment to establish a fact; repetition is pointless [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The chemist contents himself with a single experiment to establish any qualitative fact, because he knows there is such a uniformity in the behavior of chemical bodies that another experiment would be a mere repetition of the first in every respect. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], IV) | |
| A reaction: I take it this endorses my 'Upanishads' view of natural kinds - that for each strict natural kind, if you've seen one you've them all. This seems to fit atoms and molecules, but only roughly fits tigers. |
| 19254 | Our laws of nature may be the result of evolution [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: We may suppose that the laws of nature are results of an evolutionary process. ...But this evolution must proceed according to some principle: and this principle will itself be of the nature of a law. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VII) | |
| A reaction: Maybe I've missed something, but this seems a rather startling idea that doesn't figure much in modern discussions of laws of nature. Lee Smolin's account of evolving universes comes to mind. |
| 8197 | Maybe past (which affects us) and future (which we can affect) are both real [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Maybe both the past and the future are real, determined by our current temporal perspective. Past is then events capable of having a causal influence upon events near us, and future is events we can affect, but from which we receive no information. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is the Four-Dimensional view, which is opposed to Presentism. Might immediate unease is that it gives encouragement to fortune-tellers, whom I have always dismissed with 'You can't see the future, because it doesn't exist'. |
| 8196 | The present cannot exist alone as a mere boundary; past and future truths are rendered meaningless [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The idea that only the present is real cannot be sustained. St Augustine pointed out that the present has no duration; it is a mere boundary between past and future, and dependent on them. It also denies truth-value to statements about past or future. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: To defend Presentism, I suspect that one must focus entirely on the activities of consciousness and short-term memory. All truths, of past or future, must refer totally to such mental events. But what could an event be if there is no enduring time? |